Mapping

François Lacombe proposes an improvement of pump mapping with man_made=pump in conjunction with additional tags such as pump:output=*, pump:type=* or pump=powered. The proposal would include other pump-related features and hence deprecate man_made=windpump and man_made=pumping_rig.

Maxwell Brickner suggested ten service opportunities you can contribute to from home, including OpenStreetMap.

Mapillary outlines the possibilities you have to improve OSM while staying, voluntarily or involuntarily, at home during the current pandemic.

Community

Frederik Ramm is once again defending the old-school, hand-crafted OSM against the importers. He argues against Facebook’s opinion that OSM’s biggest challenge is ‘importing even readily available authoritative data sets’.

Joseph Eisenberg recommends adding the new status ‘import’ to tag and key pages in the OSM wiki to mark keys or values which found their way through large imports into the OSM database. He points to the tiger:*=* tag family as a prominent example.

This year’s State of the Map Conference will become virtual due to the Coronavirus. The organisers are in the process of developing an open source software solution and are still looking for a frontend developer to help them.

An owner for a ‘OpenStreetMap Deutschland’ YouTube account is sought (automatic translation) desperately. Whether the FOSSGIS, which claims (automatic translation) to be the licensee of trademark rights on OpenStreetMap and demands admin access, is the right organisation to run the account may be a point of contention.

Alessandro Sarretta describes (automatic translation) how to make a map, using uMap, of the businesses providing home delivery during the COVID-19 crisis. The tagging that is being used to indicate what home delivery is being provided is also explained.

Jothirnadh, from Amazon, provides some insight into the company’s mapping activities in Germany in the forum and user diary following some criticism (automatic translation) in the Germany forum recently about the use of private imagery.

Humanitarian OSM

HOT lists ways you can contribute to OSM while staying at home during the Coronavirus outbreak.

HOT have decided not to postpone HOT Summit 2020, to be held in Cape Town on 1 and 2 July, and plans to stick to the previously announced deadlines. In a tweet HOT also stated that they’ll continue to monitor the situation in light of health and travel warnings.

In the wake of the Piendamó River avalanche in the early morning of 20 March 2020, which affected more than 60 households in the Guambia indigenous reserve of the Misak community in the Department of Cauca, Colombia, and due to quarantine measures ordered in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the response of emergency agencies may be delayed. The indigenous community is requesting financial support to address the emergency. If you are unable to support them in this way, please help us spread the word about their problems, or contribute to the mapping of the affected area.

Maps

[1] Madison Draper, from Mapbox, provides a downloadable map colouring book with the favorite places of the Mapbox team to keep your children entertained during the times of Coronavirus. If you have a need for more, she also explains how to create your own maps for colouring.

According to a tweet Mehmed Akcin from EdgeUno plans to support the distribution of map tiles.

Martin Elias blogged on how MapTiler is helping the Berliner Morgenpost cope with the large increase in traffic to their COVID-19 map.

RandoCarto has produced a poster featuring the hospitals in Île-de-France. They were rendered from OSM data, cut along the boundaries, and assembled on a single sheet.

In Germany refuse collection vehicles are generally not allowed to reverse anymore for safety reasons. This sometimes leads to changes in the routes followed by the garbage trucks. The Frankfurt waste disposal company (FES) provides a map (automatic translation), based on OpenStreetMap, where you can check if your street is affected.

Dropshadow_1 has produced a uMap of essential services in the Métropole du Grand Nancy. The map shows the locations of grocery shops, supermarkets, pharmacies, bakeries, and tobacconists.

The Portuguese newspaper Dinheiro Vivo published, through an online article (automatic translation), a story about the website SOS Covid. This website allows you to find, in real time, the supermarket closest to you that has the essential goods you need in a state of emergency. Fresh products, health and hygiene items, and also groceries are the products that can be found, for now, with this portal. The SOS Covid page was developed by the software development company Feralbyte, in partnership with researchers from the Centre for Research in Geo-Spatial Sciences (CICGE – UPorto|ISMAI). The use of the OSM licence was respected!

Software

Guillaume Rischard is proposing a new logo for Overpass Turbo, which might cause nostalgic feelings in people who were around in the 80s.

Mietz recommends (automatic translation) using the Android app SyncMe Wireless in combination with OsmAnd to make your OsmAnd recorded GPX tracks and photos from your phone available on your computer.

Releases

Paul Norman announced a major milestone, v5.0.0, for OSM’s main map style Carto. He highlighted the major changes in his post on the OSM-dev mailing list while a complete list of improvements can, as usual, be found on GitHub.

Simon Poole released version 14.1.0 of the mobile OSM editor Vespucci. The improvements made in this minor version are detailed in the release notes with the complete list of changes maintained in the changelog on GitHub.

Did you know …

… the ham radio group of the RWTH Aachen University has set up (automatic translation) an OSM tile server for providing base maps in ham radio applications, such as APRS in the European-based High-speed Amateur-radio Multimedia NETwork, and HAMNET. TNX and 73 DE WeeklyOSM.

Other “geo” things

The GIScience News Blogreports (automatic translation) that the Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology (HeiGIT) wants to hold 25 mapathons, all over Germany, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Klaus Tschira Foundation.

Gregory Scruggs reports on the Million Neighborhoods map in an article on Next City. The map uses OSM data to calculate the level of street access and AI to suggest a street network that could be created to give people access.

dktue pointed (automatic translation) to a video on LinkedIn which compares the length of the road network from OSM, TomTom and Here. However, there seem to be some questions with regard to the measurements, i.e. if all datasets included the same types of ways.

Planning to set up a situation map for your region? Starting from 18 March, Ushahidi has waived its basic plan fees for 90 days to support COVID-19 responses.

EVNavigation have released a beta version of their EVNavigation app for precise A-to-B route planning for electric cars. Range calculations consider both the elevation of the terrain and other dynamic variables that may affect battery performance, such as weight, tyre pressure, temperature, wind, and driver behaviour. The app is using OpenChargeMap as a data source for charging stations and OpenStreetMap for mapping data.

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